Scissorum

Weekly Newsletter 26 January 2024

This Week Merchant Taylors’

Merchant Taylors' Young Musician of the Year

After over eighty performances were heard in the preliminary rounds, on Wednesday evening eighteen boys competed in the final of this year's Young Musician of the Year competition. The standard of performance was consistently high, and whilst the winners deserve congratulation, so do all the finalists. By way of note, the competition is open to boys at Merchant Taylors' Prep School from Years 3 to 8, alongside those at Merchant Taylors' in the Third and Upper Third Forms, and the preliminary rounds were assessed by Simon Couldridge and Nick Stuart. The final was adjudicated by Richard Hobson, Organist and Director of Music of the Grosvenor Chapel, and former Director of Music at Merchant Taylors' from 1996 to 2012. Wednesday's final opened with the string class, where amongst others we heard engaging performances of Saint-Saens's Allegro Appassionato by Kaihan Tucker, a spirited performance of Squire's Danse Rustique by Thomas MacMillan, and Ethan Gao's enchantingly poised performance of Massenet's famous Meditation . In the woodwind class there were no finalists from the senior school, but the three performances on oboe, clarinet, and flute by boys from the prep school showed great skill, particularly in the phrasing. The brass class featured two works by the modern composer Mark Nightingale, the first being The Turkey performed by Yugo Fletcher on the trumpet, which was played with great character and enthusiasm. All of the percussionists were performing on Indian instruments, one dhol player and two table players. Saahan Shah opened the class with an improvisation on traditional Punjabi bhangra beats, displaying great skill in handling of timbre and rhythm. Omkar Vaidya's tabla performance exhibited his great dexterity in the playing of complex rhythmic passages. In the singing class there were five finalists performing a wide range of songs, from an old Italian Marian hymn to a song from Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera . For boys of this age the challenges of vocal range can be an issue, but this was largely handled well. The final class of the evening was the piano class, where three boys from Merchant Taylors' demonstrated their musical maturity. Steven Kormushev played one of Scarlatti's many keyboard sonatas, a vibrant and well handled performance. Kaihan Tucker's performance of Brahms's Intermezzo in A was wonderfully lyrical, and

Thomas MacMillan's rendition of Prelude in D-flat by Gliere was fluent and expressive. The winners of the individual classes were: Strings: Ethan Gao (violin)

Woodwind: Xiling Wang (flute) Brass: Ethan Dominique (cornet) Percussion: Amar Dahele (tabla) Singing: Archit Ramdeo Piano: Kaihan Tucker

The winner of the whole competition, crowned Merchant Taylors' Young Musician of the Year 2024, was Kaihan Tucker.

September 29 2017

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